


Bittersweet

by Northisnotup



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, M/M, Past Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 10:31:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northisnotup/pseuds/Northisnotup
Summary: Connor thinks on his relationship with his mother - a slight White Oleander au





	Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

> Implication of KamCon while Connor was underaged.

Arms around his waist and lips at his temple shocked Connor back into his body, from where he'd been staring into space.

"You're thinking about your mother again." Hank said, and Connor knew he was looking at the canvas they both stood in front of.

He hadn't been, but to say that would have been disingenuous.

"Not thinking - just feeling." He said instead, turning so Hank could kiss the spot between his eyebrows and down his nose to his lips.

She was in the paper today, is all. She never needed me. I knew that. But it still shocks me. That she kept me close, kept me her's when she never needed me at all - Connor didn't say.

"What do you think?" He asked, instead of any of that, and Hank's rough beard chafed Connor's mouth and nose when he turned.

"It's a little blunt, for you."

Connor nodded, not satisfied with the rough sketch of colour and theme - but it was honest, for what it was. A self portrait of influence.

A simple table under a window - covered in a white and blue cloth that just didn't cover the edges.

There was his mother - the oleander. Beautiful and poisonous, propped and trapped in a vase of fresh milk. The shears which trimmed her off the branch laying beside, thick and sharp with blocky black handles. Her undoing.

There was Elijah, a smoking cigarette burning down in an ashtray. Arguably the snake in the garden, who goaded Connor into throwing off his mother's teachings for the first man to show interest and make him feel wanted. Elijah had been his mother's student - too old and too jaded and probably a formative experience, if Connor was being honest.

Outside the window was Markus - a starling lingering on the sill, outsider looking in. A chance at freedom and escape Connor never took.

A crumpled piece of paper. The cap of a beer bottle. A rosary. Those things were Connor as much as the whole painting was. Scraps of the lives he lead as other people - always the foster child.

And the shaving kit was Hank. Old fashioned and warm, hot towel and a bowl of frothy cream, straight razor with a butter-smooth leather handle. She never approved of Connor's constant straining need for a father figure - a rough guiding hand.

"I don't know how to convey how much simpler the world was when I belonged to her. How safe I felt with someone so dangerous." He said finally.

"Why are there two chairs at the table?"

A smile tugged at Connor's lips and he turned fully into Hank's arms, kissing him deeply. 

Most people wouldn't notice the second chair. Almost identical to the first but pulled out from the table so as not to create a set. "I have a brother. A twin. We weren't kept together."

Hank grunted, a chesty noise that resonated through Connor's ribcage too. "Have you seen him since?"

Connor shook his head, slumping slightly in Hank's firm hold to rest his forehead against his lover's thickly muscled shoulder. "If I testified at her trial, she was going to help me find him."

"Fuck, Connor. I'm sorry." Hank rubbed broad hands up and down Connor's back, as if trying to soothe a hurt he couldn't reach.

Tilting his head, Connor felt the beat-beat-beat of Hank's heart against his lips. "I had the option. I chose not to."

Hank nodded, his beard tangling in Connor's hair, but did not stop the slow up and down of his hands. 

"You know, you're the best thing that ever happened to me."


End file.
